No. 4.] IMPR0VEMP:NT of pastures. 431 



Chemicals and Barn Feeding. 

 The combination of barn feeding as a source of pasture 

 fertility with chemical fertilization presents some points of 

 advantage. It is often asked, How are we to keep the 

 bushes and weeds back after cutting? While continuous 

 August cutting will soon kill bushes, it is an advantage to 

 gain the assistance of stock. Where stock is partly fed at 

 the barn, they are more likely to crop lower the green 

 things at pasture and to hold bushes back. The chemicals 

 rightly used call out the grasses, and these crowd closer the 

 weeds, while an overstocked -pasture is certain to have its 

 weeds closer fed. Chemical fertilization will soon show a 

 pasture of clean grass sward, and quicker, if animals are 

 barn fed in part. In my own practice all pastures available 

 for fields have been taken in for plowing, and I am com- 

 pelled to barn feed in part. I find an advantage in this 

 sj^stem, as in some trials it appeared that a fodder of dry 

 matter daily was advantageous to grazing stock. Theoreti- 

 callv, a cow or steer is obliged to take in more water than 

 is required if enough grass of 75 per cent water is taken to 

 furnish all the nutrition required, — 110 to 120 pounds of 

 grass being required. In cool days in early spring and in 

 the fall or late summer there would be a material excess of 

 water to vaporize and throw oflf the body. This requires 

 food to do it. It is not a vital point, yet one of the lesser 

 economic questions involved. 



Rotation with Fields. 



I am pressing all the available pasture ground and wood- 

 land not essential to the farm into fields, and in an eight 

 years' rotation assigning one year for pasturage. By this 

 system one-eighth of the tillage area is ahvays in pasture, — 

 and in good pasture, as it is manured the year before graz- 

 ing, indeed, every year. 



This system has an advantage over fertilizing an old 

 pasture, in that new and vigorous plants are fed that are 

 responsive. Also, aeration and decomposition of soil by 

 the process of aeration add to the available plant food of 



